INDONESIA’S CULTURAL DIPLOMACY TO JAPAN THROUGH TOURISM PROMOTION (2015 – 2018)

Abstract

Tourism sector was established as one of the leading sectors of Indonesia by President Joko Widodo in 2014 due to its contribution in developing the nation’s economy. States have been trying their best in conducting their cultural diplomacy to attract tourists from overseas. Indonesian government in particularly has been known to utilize the tourism promotion in their conduct of cultural diplomacy. The development of diplomacy and how the Indonesian government utilized the various culture of Indonesia (music, dance, culinary, and cultural heritage) in the tourism promotion programs will be delineated in this study, alongside achieving the Indonesia’s foreign policy objectives in tourism sector in Japan during 2015 to 2018. Previously, the Japanese tourists’ arrivals number has not meet the goals and therefore the government tried to put more efforts in order to increase the number. Not only using qualitative approach and data collection technique by assessing official documents from Ministry of Tourism and other government institutions, this study will also be using secondary data that are mostly examined literatures namely journals, books, reports, and articles that are related to the case. The results of this study showed that soft power can be found in the conduct of cultural diplomacy, as the cultural elements were being transmitted to the target audience of the tourism promotion programs. Optimizing the diverse culture of Indonesia has showed that coercive power like economic sanctions or military actions was not needed in fulfilling the nation’s interest. Therefore, these efforts made by the Indonesian government can be considered as the conduct of cultural diplomacy.